Tuesday, June 18, 2002

David Carter-Tod: Course Information Syndication Format #

I'm trying to figure the answer to a question about RSS 1.0:  How does one syndicate arbitrary but valid XML fragments with RSS 1.0   It turns out that David Carter-Tod (who is often ahead of me!) has been pondering a related issue.  If I understand correctly what David is saying, he thinks that one can extend metadata in RSS 1.0 by plopping in a custom namespace.  (In his sample document, he uses a learnRSS namespace (http://www.wcc.vccs.edu/dtod/learnRSS/).  I am under the impression that in order to extend RSS 1.0, one actually has to do more work than that -- one actually has to write a RSS 1.0 module  (There are modules for various metadata specifications, including Dublin Core)  Am I wrong?  I hope so.  I suspect that the latter approach (of having to write a module) has to do with the fact that RSS 1.0 is built upon RDF -- and that extensions must therefore be cast in that framework.  However, a lot of metadata syndication I want to do is not cast from a point of view of RDF (no matter how great RDF may eventually be!).  The former approach (of just delineating metadata through namespaces) is the approach used in IMS ("The XML Schema Definition language (XSD, XDR) binding does not inhibit either of the types of meta-data extensions defined above. Developers can use other LOM elements as an extension or as new elements (defined in a specific namespace), and may be introduced to extend the meta-data. Namespace elements typically contain a meaningful prefix, such as "adl" (to represent the Advanced Distributed Learning initiative) to uniquely identify its extensions.")  and METS  ("An mdWrap element provides a wrapper around metadata embedded within a METS document. Such metadata can be in one of two forms: 1. XML-encoded metadata, with the XML-encoding identifying itself as belonging to a namespace other than the METS document namespaceAn mdWrap element provides a wrapper around metadata embedded within a METS document. Such metadata can be in one of two forms: 1. XML-encoded metadata, with the XML-encoding identifying itself as belonging to a namespace other than the METS document namespace"). I'm sending email to David -- and hope to post to the rss-dev list (after reading through some docs...) Followup David has posted a response already (thanks!).  I've posted on the rss-dev list and am awaiting a response.   Posted by Raymond Yee on 6/18/02; 11:45:01 AM from the Web Technology dept. Discuss